the Lord for His love and tender goodness to me in moving His
servant to write thus unto me.

But I had cause soon after to double and redouble my thankful
acknowledgment to the Lord my God, who put it into the heart of my
dear friend Isaac Penington also to visit me with some encouraging
lines from Aylesbury Gaol, where he was then a prisoner; and from
whence (having heard that I was carried prisoner to Oxford) he thus
saluted me:-


"DEAR THOMAS,

"Great hath been the Lord's goodness to thee in calling thee out of
that path of vanity and death wherein thou wast running towards
destruction; to give thee a living name, and an inheritance of life
among His people; which certainly will be the end of thy faith in
Him and obedience to Him. And let it not be a light thing in thine
eyes that He now accounteth thee worthy to suffer among His choice
lambs, that He might make thy crown weightier and thy inheritance
the fuller. Oh that that eye and heart may be kept open in thee
which knoweth the value of these things, and that thou mayst be kept
close to the feelings of the life, that thou mayst be fresh in thy
spirit in the midst of thy sufferings, and mayst reap the benefit of
them; finding that pared off thereby which hindereth the bubblings
of the everlasting springs, and maketh unfit for the breaking forth
and enjoyment of the pure power! This is the brief salutation of my
dear love to thee, which desireth thy strength and settlement in the
power, and the utter weakening of thee as to self. My dear love is
to thee, with dear Thomas Goodyare and the rest of imprisoned